Like Scarecrows That Fuel This Flame We're Burning
by rayychel infinity
Summary: Kurt Hummel, notorious mob boss risen to power after the untimely death of his father, Burt Hummel, escapes prison and heads off to find his boyfriend, Blaine Anderson.


**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own _Glee_, Fox does. And Ryan Murphy. Title from "Demolition Lovers" by My Chemical Romance.

Tumblr is here (endofadream) and this story is inspired by a post on there as well.

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The first thing Kurt does when he escapes is Tweet.

_ khummel: Quite lovely weather today. Glad I'm outside to enjoy it_.

He hits send and adjusts his sunglasses, leaning against the building he's standing in front of and watching the people hurry by, the yellow whir of taxis in the street. The air is cleaner than he remembers it, if the smell of smog and sewer can be considered clean. It is home, though, and Kurt's missed that, was keeping tabs of the days with tallies on his cell wall since he'd been sentenced over a year ago.

It's amazing how easy it is to forget what freedom looks like, what it means to look around and not see towering fences topped with barbed wire overhead on all sides.

His prison uniform is wadded up at the bottom of his briefcase, the one he'd had stashed and hidden before he'd gotten busted; he smoothes the plum-colored tie knotted at his throat, runs his fingers over the dark lapels of his suit jacket. It's a few seasons out of date by now, but Kurt has connections, has his ways, and he won't be needing this particular suit for more than a few hours if everything goes the way it's supposed to, anyway.

Once more he looks down at his phone, smiles as he imagines those hopeless NYPD officers seeing it and banding together—no doubt word of his breakout has already reached that circuit., will quickly move on to the FBI and the Marshals He didn't turn his location off, but that doesn't matter. If Blaine had listened like he promised he would Kurt won't need to stick around here for long. And besides, he's always liked mocking the police, the FBI, as long as he's a few steps head of the game.

Easily, like a shadow, Kurt steps in and blends with the rest of the crowd. As the mass moves by a trashcan there's a distinctive metallic-sounding thud, a glint that shines, momentarily suspended in the light, as a cell phone hits the thin layer of garbage at the bottom of the can.

—

The loft is in Bushwick, a parting gift from a man who had crossed Kurt the wrong way and had ended up with his body diced into pieces and tossed overboard into the Hudson. Kurt hopes that Blaine is here, that he'd kept his promise and hadn't left. He doesn't know what he'd do if Blaine had run, if Kurt would come back to find the loft empty—or, worse, occupied by someone else with no Blaine in sight.

It's dark when he gets inside, quiet, and the orange light from outside filters in through the grimy windows, spills over the floor and highlights a small couch, a squat oak coffee table. There's a rug underneath both, fluffy white sheepskin.

Kurt lets the door slide shut with an echoing clang, drops his briefcase to the floor next to a small kitchen table fitted with a gleaming silver centerpiece of fake fruit. In the corner of the loft a curtain hangs, suspended by hooks in the ceiling, and it's there that Kurt guesses Blaine's bed must be.

He can't help but smile, his heart picking up ever so slightly. It's been far too long since he's seen Blaine, heard his voice, and he'd be lying if he said that every step on his way here wasn't laced with anxiety, the fear that he hadn't been worth waiting around for, that Blaine had moved on and found someone better.

He's spent so many nights thinking about Blaine, trying to fill the void in his heart with literature, petty gambling for cigarettes even though he doesn't smoke—Kurt just likes the game, likes winning; his cellmate had always appreciated the extra smokes Kurt usually brought in from the yard, though.

Kurt thinks of his and Blaine's parting once things had begun to fall apart like a house of cards, when he'd given Blaine the keys to this loft before running, the Feds already hot on his tail and in danger of closing in on Blaine, too, all because of a lapse in judgment. The look Blaine had given him—scared, helpless, desperate—had haunted Kurt almost every night in prison. It had been that, mostly, that had fueled his escape.

The steps Kurt takes towards the partition are deliberate. The clean soles of his shoes echo on the wood and reverberate throughout the loft with a faint, tapping squeak. It sounds almost too loud, and the hairs on his arm and the back of his neck prickle, rise, with that feeling that he's not alone, that he's being watched.

Before he gets there he hears another sound, a faint click, feels the presence of something at his back, something he's been honed to sense ever since he was a kid; he smiles without turning around, raises his arms up slightly in surrender, and says, still staring at the gap in the curtains, the sliver of Blaine's exposed, empty bed, "You wouldn't kill your boyfriend with the gun he bought you, would you?"

The silence stretches on for a moment longer, the kind of thick silence that seems stunned, disbelieving, and then Blaine's hoarse voice is saying, "Kurt?" like he's seen a ghost, like he's willing himself to wake up any moment now. Kurt knows that feeling all too well.

He turns around, drops his hands as his sides. He steps out of the shadows and into the reach of the window. He stares at Blaine in his navy-blue silk pajamas half-hidden in darkness, his chin and arms illuminated to show the Glock he's holding steadily in his hands, the business end pointed directly at Kurt's chest.

Kurt says, eyeing the straight arm and the cocked one, the perfect posture and the foot back to center Blaine's weight, "It looks like you took my words to heart and started practicing."

Blaine swallows, his throat bobbing visibly, and says without breaking eye contact, shuffling a little more into the light so that Kurt can see the shine of his irises, the glint of the honey-gold Kurt's dreamed about for over a year, "Well, one of us had already gone to prison, leaving the other unguarded and with a ridiculous amount of pressure on his back."

Kurt smiles, tilts his head, and looks at Blaine with that softness to his eyes that no one else ever sees. The gun in Blaine's hands wavers slightly, tips down, and Kurt speaks, lips wrapping warmly around his words, the words he's ached to say for so long now.

"I'm home, baby."

Blaine has a brief moment of clarify where he puts the safety back on before he's dropping the gun to the floor and rushing forward, wrapping Kurt up in a crushing hug as he says, watery and muffled against Kurt's neck where he buries his face, "You're so goddamn stupid, you know that?"

Kurt wraps his arms around Blaine's body, hooks his chin over his shoulder. While Blaine trembles in his arms, letting out tiny, hitching sobs, Kurt says, closing his eyes, "I know. But I had to keep you safe. I didn't want anything to happen to you. I don't know what I'd do with myself if something did."

"You were supposed to be in there for life."

"I couldn't let that happen, could I? I promised I'd never leave you."

"But you _did_." Blaine pulls away, tears gone except for the glittering streaks on his cheeks. His eyes are red and narrowed, his hair sleep-mussed, and he's radiating anger as he shoves at Kurt's chest, hard enough to have Kurt stumbling back and parting his lips in surprise. "You left me in a _dead guy's_ fucking loft while they carted you off to prison, and you expected me to stay here?"

What Kurt doesn't say, what Blaine doesn't acknowledge, is that he'd stayed like Kurt had known he would. He'd redecorated the apartment—Lucas always did have terrible taste—and had never told anyone, like Kurt had stressed, where he was. For all Kurt knows Blaine's friends and family think that he's dead, which—Kurt had never wanted any of this for Blaine, had known he was doomed the moment their eyes had met, and it's difficult, knowing this and knowing what Blaine's had to sacrifice, but it's also practical.

Kurt snaps, the fatigue and stress from the last couple of days melding with the anger in a seething, toxic concoction that weighs him down, makes him feel older than his meager twenty years, "You know I did this for you. I've always done it for you."

"What if I didn't want you to?"

Blaine's voice rises, shrill, but Kurt doesn't try to abate it, doesn't try to stop Blaine from continuing.

"You forced me here like a fucking kept boy in the apartment of some guy you murdered, and for what? Not bringing you your money fast enough, or for giving you the wrong kind of semi-automatic in his shipment?"

Kurt doesn't tell Blaine that it was because Lucas had threatened him, had threatened Blaine and his family and had insulted the reign of Burt Hummel. No one gets away with that, not as long as Kurt is in charge. He's made sure to make that much obvious to the people he deals with.

The truth is, Kurt doesn't like murdering any more than he has to; to him, there are people who deserve it, like those who double-cross and lie and try to sell him a less-than-quality product, and those who just simply get in the way; then there are people who are casualties—tragic, yes, but necessary in the life of a crime boss. Kurt's seen his dad kill enough people that watching blood spray or limbs sever hardly makes him blink anymore.

It's something, though, that Blaine has never been fully comfortable with; Kurt recalls the night they'd met, when he'd been at a club and had been admiring from afar the man in the crowd with dark hair and tight jeans. When he'd propositioned Blaine at the bar, buying him a whiskey sour and staring at those full, pink lips, another man had approached and hadn't left Blaine alone despite Blaine's brush-offs and blatant flirting with Kurt.

They'd left the club an hour later, Kurt's arm around a tipsy Blaine to keep him straight, and he'd felt that presence, that uncomfortable tickling at the base of his neck. Slowly, carefully, he'd reached inside his jacket pocket, had steered Blaine towards an alley and pushed him against the rough brick, trusting the other man to follow. He had, stepping into the shadow just out of view of the street not long after Kurt and Blaine.

Before Blaine had had an opportunity to catch on to what was happening Kurt had already pulled the gun, had the long silver snout of the silencer pressed against the guy's temple. He'd pulled the trigger without a word and the guy had fallen, crumpled, red seeping from his temple and sprayed over the brick.

Kurt had slapped his hand over Blaine's mouth, silencing the shrill build of a scream that had already begun to leave Blaine's lips, and had stared into Blaine's wide, terrified eyes, trying to be placating and comforting in a way he wasn't quite sure how to be.

"Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you."

Since then Blaine's gotten better, knows that what Kurt does is his job, a title handed down from Hummel to Hummel, given to him by the untimely and tragic death of his father. Kurt's never told Blaine that he used to be a model, that he used to attend school and have his own dreams even though, always, something black and knowing niggled at the back of his mind, a reminder that, no matter what he studied or did, eventually he'd be the one calling the shots, killing the people who needed to be killed and doing the family business.

"That's not true," Kurt says gently, reaching out and touching the bend of Blaine's elbow. "Blaine, I didn't want you going to prison because of me. It's not your fault that you got mixed up in all of this. You could have left a long time ago."

"But I didn't."

Blaine stares at Kurt defiantly, his chin lifted. He's gone through so many emotions in that last ten minutes that he must be dizzy or exhausted but he stays strong, bites his lip and looks Kurt in the eyes. "I couldn't leave you. The Kurt that I know…the one behind this mask, away from the murder and the robbery and god knows whatever else, means every word that he's ever said to me."

It's never not going to be strange, having this huge trust bestowed upon him. He's been used to a certain amount of it, along with responsibility, all of his life, but never of this caliber, and certainly never this close to his heart. Being trusted with a gun, to shoot the man tied to a chair in a dingy basement, to rob and lie and break fingers and kneecaps, is so vastly different from what is in Blaine's eyes right now, what's written over his face as he stands in his pajamas.

Love is more intimate than murder could ever hope to be.

Kurt loves Blaine just as much as Blaine loves him—maybe more, in some weird, twisted sense—but no one has ever loved Kurt like this, maybe not even his father. No one puts everything they have, every ounce of life, of love and worry and anger, into caring about him.

The one person that's always had faith in him is Blaine. Blaine, with his prep-school background, his WASP parents back in Ohio, his halted plans for a degree of teaching from NYU, had cared about the man behind countless disappearances, murders, arms deals and money laundering. He hadn't run even when he could have, when Kurt had presented an out once it was clear that Blaine wasn't going to be some nameless one-night stand.

So Kurt says, thinking of nothing but Blaine's warm, honest eyes, his smile, the way he looks asleep and laughing and under Kurt, tangled in sheets, "Let's get married."

It's an absurd, reckless thing, more than likely improbable and impossible given their current situation, but Kurt knows, just as sure as he knew he'd end up with the family business, that Blaine is who he needs, _what_ he needs; any life now, even on the run with the law only steps behind them, would be only a half-life without Blaine by his side.

The look Kurt receives is incredulous, stupefied. They'd discussed this once before, on a night after a successful job where Kurt had come back to the apartment in good spirits and carrying takeout. Then it had been hypothetical, a could-be but never a would-be, never possible with their lives.

But both he and Blaine are hopeless romantics down to their cores, and though their relationship is as good as married can get they both still believe that a piece of paper seals the deal. Kurt's been trying to run from that reality, has been trying to escape it since everything went wrong, because there's no way they can, not now, not with his face on wanted posters and plastered all over the internet.

Before, Kurt Hummel had been just a name, a face to only people in the business; now his identity is inescapable, impossible to hide. And underneath his thick layer of bravado, his cool arrogance and suave impassivity, Kurt is scared. He can run and run, but eventually he's going to have to stop and it will all catch up to him, bury him deep until he's suffocated.

"Kurt," Blaine says, splutters, "we _can't_. They know your face now, your name. You're—_god_, you're an _escaped convict_."

"I have connections," Kurt says, like that solves everything. "We can get the license signed and run, wherever you want to. France, Italy, Greece—wherever you want to go, Blaine, we can go."

Blaine hesitates, biting his lip and running a hand through his hair. Kurt can practically see the cogs turning in his head, can see him thinking this over. No matter what, Blaine's going to have to run now. With Kurt escaped there is no hiding him anymore, no way to keep him safe anywhere else but at Kurt's side.

When they'd discussed this before, back when they'd still had the chance, Blaine hadn't wanted to because he'd wanted a wedding, wanted vows and flowers and tuxes and family. Kurt hadn't been able to guarantee Blaine any of those things, at least not then, and they hadn't talked about it again until now.

"Run away with me," Kurt pleads, stepping closer and placing his hands on Blaine's jaw. Blaine tilts up to look at him, lips parted, and Kurt closes the gap, presses their mouths together and strokes his thumb over Blaine's cheekbone.

Blaine's hands slowly fall to Kurt's hips, like he isn't sure, and then he's pressing closer, kissing Kurt hard and passionate, opening his mouth wide and gasping when Kurt's tongue slides in. It's as good as Kurt remembers, makes that hole in his stomach and heart finally begin to close up, makes him feel a little less like a half-shadow of himself. He may be on the run now, family business burned to the ground, but he has _Blaine_, he has his home.

"I knew from the moment that I met you," Blaine gasps, breaking the kiss and rubbing his nose over Kurt's, "that I would have to do this someday. And I wasn't always okay with it—shit, I'll probably never be. But…as long as I'm with you I think I can make it work."

Kurt kisses Blaine again, arms winding around Blaine's neck as he tries to pull him closer, tries to push himself closer, and he breathes _I love you_ against Blaine's lips, hears Blaine breathes it back, shaky and true.

—

Before they leave they head out for the club, the one they'd met at. On the way there they pass by the alleyway, but neither of them says anything. Kurt sometimes still wonders if Blaine regrets it, regrets getting drug under with this life, stuck in the undertow and hopeless to do anything except ride along with it. He can never ask, though, too scared to know the truth, if there is even a truth other than what he suspects. Kurt's never been proud of his paranoia.

The marriage license is in his pocket, carefully folded in his wallet. They don't have time for rings, but Kurt knows a jeweler in Paris that they can go to when their flight arrives tomorrow evening.

It's his birthday in a few days, and he'd nearly forgotten. It's so easy to lose track of time when your days go by in a haze of gray and iron and monotony, the same routine drummed into you like a terrifyingly hopeless second-nature. The tallies had helped keep track of his sentence, but they hadn't done anything in the way of helping him remember mundane events like birthdays.

Blaine doesn't expressly say it, but Kurt's been tuned into him well enough over their few years together that he remembers; the appletini he buys Kurt is clue enough. And Kurt accepts it with a smile, gives Blaine a kiss and tries not to notice how the bartender is staring, squinting, like Kurt's an old friend he can't quite recognize.

He finishes his appletini, buys Blaine a whiskey because he's much fonder of hard liquor than Kurt will ever hope to be, and they escape through the confusion of strobe lights and writhing bodies, the crush of heat and limbs on the dance floor, out into the back.

They're long gone by the time the cops arrive.

—

And by the time they do, bursting through the door of the now-empty Bushwick loft with guns drawn and vests on, all they're greeted with is a small piece of paper on a small kitchen table in place of a silver fake fruit centerpiece.

"_You've probably found out where I'd hidden Blaine by now, and you're undoubtedly probably reading this with an entire SWAT team surrounding the building; I certainly hope you are, officers. Half of the fun of my game is predicting what you're going to do next. _

_You're not dumb, I'll give you that. However, you also aren't quick, and I make it a personal point to always be one step ahead of you. Being caught once was a momentary fluke, an error in judgment that I'm never going to let happen again. So good luck finding us this time; the world is a greatly vast place and I like to think that it would be fun to explore all corners of it, especially on my honeymoon._

_Happy hunting._

_xx"_


End file.
